ISO 9001 - The Revision Process

In these last few months I have had a hectic teaching schedule where I worked on teaching ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. It was only natural that students would have questions on the changes / revisions coming up for ISO 9001 as the ISO 9001:2015 version is being considered. Many of the students wanted to know if there was a process followed to update standards or was it just ad-hoc when some one felt the need and so on. 

At Huntington, WV with the CO and students

CG students in the 5 day RABQSA certified training, in Huntington and Duluth had questions and wanted me to explain the procedure. I also received an e-mail from a student of ISO 28000 from Qatar asking a similar question. This prompted me to write a few lines on the subject. In brief here is the process for updating the standard.

    The ISO 9001 as many good thoughts has its roots in the USA. It was first published as MIL-Q-9858 in by the Department of Defense in 1959. In 1969 NATO adopted it, subsequently the UK published it as BS5750 in 1979. As ISO 9000 it was first published in 1987. The first real revision came in 1994 and this was followed by a revision in 2000. The present standard came out as ISO 9001: 2008 in 2008. The 2008 version did not have many changes. It did stress on the outsourced processes and a few changes.

  

   This new version, expected in September of 2015, however has major changes. The fundamentals remain unchanged but more standardization has been introduced to enable ease of integration of standards. More on this in a separate article.

     The main stages of a standard development are:

1. PWI: This is the Preliminary Work Item where the preliminary work is done.
2. NP or NWIP: New Work Item Proposal. The proposal is put together at this stage. 
3. WD: Working Draft. This is the preparatory stage. 
4. CD: Committee Draft. 
5. DIS: Draft International Standard. This really is the inquiry stage. 
6.  FDIS: Final Draft International Standard 
7.  IS: International Standard. This is the stage when the finally approved standard is published.

In the development of the ISO 9001:20015, the standard reached the CD stage of voting in June 2013 and the voting closed in August 2013. This is a stage where the CD is distributed to the members of the committee. It is these committee members who can at this stage distribute the CD to public. We at QMII  re-reviewed a copy at this stage. (I shall be writing on some of the expected changes shortly.)

The DIS is expected sometime in August 2014. Traditionally the DIS is available to members of the public. It is expected that the FDIS ballot will close in August 2015 and the revised ISO 9001 will be published in September 2015.

QMII conducted the RABQSA certified EMS LA (Environmental Management System Lead Auditor) training for the USCG at Yorktown. The ISO 14001:2004, together with ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 will have a revised addition in 2015. All standards in future will incorporate the HLS (High Level Structure).